Rockford College - Recensio / Cupola Yearbook (Rockford, IL)

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Sophomore Class History , OUNTING a year three hundred and sixty five days, calling it two years since we came together, and allowing for each of those years, one hundred and twenty days of vacation, we are able to conclude that the Sophomore class has existed at Rockford College four hun- dred and ninety days. That we may look with a judicious historical eye over the memories of those days, let us take the rats from our hair and with them shed all our youthful vanitiesg let us disentangle ourselves from the present, drop from the school and its affairsg step, say fifty years into the future, and seat ourselves,-a nice cozy bunch of old ladies,-around some one of our tea-tables. Give us a room at dusk, with the curtains half-drawn, leaving between them just a peep of snowy, twilight landscape, furnish this room in the dark hangings and brussels and fringed upholstery which old ladies so love and which hold memories as naturally as they hold dust' have somewhere an old rose Jar shedding through the room the perfume of flowers picked and withered two decades before mingle with this perfume the warmth and glow of a cheery hearth fire, which may if you please pick from out the dusk the gilded frames on the wall and play softly among the dishes on the table and glint agaii st the little tea kettle singing cozily in the midst Arrange us thus comfortably and we will without doubt become as any old ladies would under the circumstances quite pensive and reminiscent Let Helen or if there has been among us a more persistent memento hunter let her have her memory book at hand But before we open the book let us each take our cup of tea and draw up about the fire and so, with the light glowing up in to our dim old ey es, after all these stage directions let us look into the coals and see what memories come to us There will be the Alma Mater as we saw her last, sitting high among her campus trees Linden and Chapel and Middle and the other halls beyond all grey and reverend faded or fading from a ruddy red brick youth of half a century before the color blown from her by the winds which have beat against her and washed away by the rains which have fallen upon her and 2 . 1 6 7 25 Y ' Y. rv . v -v a . w . ' 7 . , 5 1 . zs . .1 , . -Y . . .7. . zs zs ' v as s ' ID 7 . . . a a 1 a ' 1 1 ' a v 7 3 - . V . . . 7 o 1 a 7 . - . 7 , w zs V . . 7 . 7 . . v

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by the snows which have melted in her erannies,-subdued too, we fancy, by the furnace smoke which good old Mr. Hubbard was wont to let roll merrily from her stacks. There will be the morning chapel, with the girls throng' ing down the steps into the dusky, tall-windowed, beam-ceiled, little sanc- tuary, and, if our chimney be one that draws a little noisily, and our ears be a trifle deceptive and our imagination still young and fresh, we may hear again the organ pealing out its prelude, straining as though to burst its gilded pipes, and rolling the notes up to clamor tumultously along the roof,-then the service, low-spoken and above it all the campus trees singing softly in through the windows. Some of us will see the library and think of the hours we passed in the big, book-walled room under the bustling guardian- ship of genial Miss Northey and the pale surveilance of old Dr. Swing, dark- ling over by his window. Some of us will see the bare practice rooms of Sill Hall and recall weary days spent in thumming scales with no company except a clicking metronome and perhaps a friendly sun-beam which broke against our fingers as they were busy on the keys and was sent a-jigging in mad little splashes against the wall. Looking into the coals so, we will surely recall the evenings in Middle Hall, with the great fire-place there ablaze and roaring, showering its light over a multitude of ribbons and flounces, while the black old Dante's head sat brooding above in the dusk, doubtless stowing away in his plaster-of-Paris brains all the senseless chatter going on about him, as a source of amusement over night. After we have wiped off our spectacles and cleared our throats behind our hands, as nice old ladies will do when they have been thinking of the days of their youth, Helen may take up her memory book and we will all crowd around her as she opens it. There will be, without a doubt, among the faded, yellowed mementos a note or pressed flower to remind us of the tea which the juniors, in the kindness of their hearts, served to us as very fresh young Freshmen, there will be at issue paper cap or a gilt half moon to tell of the cotillion which we, in the confidence of our second semester, tendered as a return courtesy to the juniors, there will be a bit of baby ribbon, per- haps, to recall the joyful indignities which we suffered at the baby party, there will be curious old photos to bespeak the time when, by way of proper introduction to the upper class social circles, we, under their austere gaze, cavorted as gamboling baa-baa lambs or howling beasts of the forests, there will be three ragged bits of old rose cloth, one to stand for a victorious color 26